


a little lamb who's lost in the wood

by BeautifulSoup



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Sex Education, Wedding Planning, discussion of sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23277151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifulSoup/pseuds/BeautifulSoup
Summary: “I’m sorry, Hugh, and I’m glad you’re keen enough to take notes, but… is your official notebook really the place?”As his wedding night approaches, Hugh asks for advice from someone who knows what she's talking about.
Relationships: Hugh Collins/Dorothy "Dot" Williams
Comments: 17
Kudos: 74





	a little lamb who's lost in the wood

**Author's Note:**

> This is very silly.
> 
> I started this 2 years ago during my first watch of the series and promptly forgot about it, but luckily palavapeite watched it for the first time recently and unknowingly reminded me this existed. Thank you for inspiring me to finish kicking it into the rough shape you see before you now.

“And the Inspector sent you here?”

“Yes, Miss- Doctor- Ma’am-” Hugh took a breath at the steady, amused look the doctor had levelled at him and glanced around the room. In the circumstances, he was immensely glad that she was in her office rather than the morgue. She looked different when she wasn’t standing in front of a corpse. “He said that… that the best person to ask about women _was_ a woman, and that you knew them better than most.”

“Did he indeed?” MacMillan drawled, one thin eyebrow rising up her forehead.

Hugh merely nodded, and glanced quickly around the room. “You being a doctor and all,” he clarified, and her other eyebrow rose to join the first.

She settled herself on her chair and leaned forward, her arms crossed on the desk before her. “I think, Constable, that you’d be best telling me exactly why you’re here.”

It took him a few false starts, but he finally managed, “Well, you see, with the wedding coming up,” by focussing on the shelf full of books over the doctor’s shoulder. “I know that it can be… that it can hurt… and I don’t… I want it to be as pleasant for Dottie as it can. I’d hate it if I hurt her.” He flicked his eyes to look at the doctor, and found her face had softened somewhat, although there was something like a twitch at the corner of her mouth. “I asked the Inspector, as he is- _was_ married, but he said… well, he told me a little, but then he sent me to you.” He felt about to combust: his cheeks were on fire.

“Well, Constable,” she said, sitting back to look at him. “You’ve come to the right place.” She pulled a bottle of whisky from her desk drawer.

“Oh, no thank y-”

“Trust me, Constable, you’ll thank me for this soon enough. Doctor’s orders.”

“Uh, thank you.”

“Tell me, Hugh,” she began, “What do you know about the female form?” Two glasses joined the bottle on the desk, and the doctor proceeded to pour an inch in each.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Hugh said, and stared at the glasses on the table for some time.

She continued to stare at him, and after a moment he remembered her question. He felt his cheeks heat and took a sip of whisky. It didn’t _help_ , precisely, but the burn of the liquor distracted from the burning of his entire face.

“I know the general… you know, the basics.” He sketched a rough hourglass shape in the air, clumsy with the glass in one hand, but he hoped he got the idea across. He felt a little like he was conducting an orchestra. The doctor let out a heavy sigh.

“Well, it’s a start,” she said, seemingly more to herself than to him. “Let me be more specific: What do you know about _Dottie_?”

“Oh, nothing! We haven’t-”

“Don’t be defensive, Collins.” She held her hands up to him with a sigh. “I am not here to accuse either you or your fiancée of anything… _improper_ , I’m just trying to establish a baseline. You’ve kissed?”

“Yes,” he said, and the memory of Dottie’s lips floated to the front of his mind, the warm softness of her in his arms. Some of the tension seeped from his spine.

“Anything else?” The doctor asked. “Any… _petting_?” The look she gave him told him she did not mean when he stroked Dottie’s hair.

“No!” he exclaimed. “No, kissing’s all we’ve done. When we go to the pictures-”

“Ah,” the doctor sighed, settling back in her chair. “The dark of the theatre, perfect for disguising so much.” She seemed to be thinking of something else entirely, so Hugh just blinked at her for a couple of moments until she came back to herself.

“Well, like I say, when we go to the pictures, I’ll put my arm around her, and she’ll lay her head on my shoulder. Sometimes she’ll put a hand on my knee, but I wouldn’t…”

“And have you any experience asides from our dear Dot?”

He felt his cheeks turn scarlet, wondering vaguely if his complexion would ever return to normal. He was, he knew, not at quite the level of experience as most men his age. He thought of the closest he had come to… _the act_ , but that had been when he was sixteen and had been pulled into a broom cupboard by Mary Owen after school, when she had kissed him very confidently and stuck her hand down the front of his trousers as a unexpected but not unwelcome surprise. It had not been a long-lasting encounter, and she had stalked off with a heavy pout when he had been unable to do anything but blink at her and stutter apologies.

He outlined the basics of this encounter to Doctor MacMillan, leaving out names and the cold, damp sensation in his underpants afterwards. She enquired whether he had had any other similar experiences, and when that returned a negative, asked if he had any vicarious experience, anything he had heard from other men.

“Do you mean to say,” she said after he had answered, “that you have been working as a police constable for three years, in a port city like Melbourne, and haven’t picked up any tips on mankind’s greatest vice?”

Hugh didn’t feel there was much he could say to that, so he just shrugged and looked down at his glass. “I know how it works,” he muttered, staring at the amber liquid in his glass, “I’m not a… not a _child_ , Doctor MacMillan, I just want to be able to make it…”

“Good for Dottie, yes, I know.” She sighed, and when he looked back up at her there was a small, tight smile on her face.

There was something almost like an apology in that smile. He took another sip of whisky.

“The female body is not as complicated as some men like to make out,” she said, clasping her hands in front of her like a teacher giving a lecture. “And from what I gather – and I am _far_ from an expert on this particular aspect, I hasten to admit – the men who claim to believe that women are indecipherable creatures with impossible anatomy are chiefly too concerned with their own pleasure to worry at all about their partner’s. And, if you don’t mind me saying, Constable, the fact that you are here asking me about this means that you are, thankfully for our dear Dottie, _not_ one of those men.”

“Thank you?”

“The single most important thing that you can do on your wedding night is to _listen to your wife_.”

He tried to hide the small thrill that went through him at the words _your wife_. He wondered if it was something he would ever grow used to. “I think that’s important on all the other nights, and days too.”

“Very wise, Constable. And…” She paused, and looked at him with a curious expression. “I’m sorry, Hugh, and I’m glad you’re keen enough to take notes, but… is your official notebook really the place?”

He looked down and realised that he was indeed writing in his police-issue notebook. Thankfully he had got as far as writing ­ _1 – Listen_ , and now snapped it shut and took his personal notebook out. He felt guilty flicking past shopping lists from his mum, but found a blank page to continue on. Having the notebook and pencil in his hands pulled him back more certainly to himself, and he even managed to look Doctor MacMillan in the eye for a second or two at a time as she spoke.

“Wise to listen generally, but I mean a different kind of listening in this particular case. We’ve established that you and Miss Williams kiss, yes?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“And how do you know if she’s enjoying the kiss?”

“She… well… Sometimes she’ll grab my arms, or… she makes these little sounds, sometimes, and…”

It had happened last night, so it was fresh in his mind. He had put his arms around Dottie to kiss her goodbye as he left Wardlow for the evening. The kitchen had been uncharacteristically quiet, so it had been a little more lingering than they often had the opportunity for, and her arms had wound around his neck. He wished now that he could remember what he had done, but even at the time he had been blissfully confused about what had pulled the breathless gasp from her, what had made her fingers clutch in his hair. He had tried to replicate everything he had been aware of doing: her lower lip slipping between his, his hands tightening in the plush velvet of her dressing gown, but she had only laughed a little (gently, not cruelly - he didn’t think she could ever be cruel), and pulled back slowly. Her hazel eyes had looked dark as chocolate in the kitchen lights as she had said _“Good night, Hugh”_ quietly, and placed her palm against his cheek. The smile she had given him as she leaned against the door had been counting days.

“Same theory,” Doctor MacMillan continued on, either unaware or uncaring of the storm swirling inside him at the reminiscence. “The best you can do for her on the night is kiss her - a mouth can do a lot a lot for a woman, as can hands. Worst thing a man can do is try to jump right to what _he_ conceives is the main event.”

She gestured vaguely at his crotch in a way that made him feel slightly insulted, but he could tell it wasn’t a personal attack.

“Take things slow: kiss her, touch her,” her voice became soft. “Keep it gentle and let her set the pace. Get the feel of her: the curve of her waist, the slope of her hips, the weight of her-”

“I think I understand, Doctor,” he interrupted, noticing the slightly dreamy look coming over the doctor’s face, and the unmistakable shape her hands were describing as they cupped the air. Her gaze sharpened as she looked back to him and cut a smile.

She stood and walked to a shelf, came back with a model of some kind. It was predominantly pink, with several different parts of different colours: yellows, blues, reds, greens. He leaned forward to peer more closely. He then scrambled back in his chair as he realised what he was looking at.

“Dottie, of course, will have flesh over most of these areas,” Doctor MacMillan said calmly as she gestured over… _it_. “If she doesn’t then you should probably let me know.” She gave him a wry smile. He felt a little sick. “And she won’t be colour-coded, but this will give you an idea of what you’ll find.”

She seemed to notice his pallor and covered the most disturbing parts of the model with her handkerchief.

“Apologies, Constable, but this is used for teaching anatomy rather more… in-depth than this. This is what you’ll see.” She gestured to the area between the severed plastic thighs. His queasiness subsided as he felt less like he was watching an autopsy. “You will want to pay attention to this area in particular – but _be gentle_ , for heaven’s sake. Don’t go blundering with all guns cocked, as it were. Don’t go racing for it – warm her up, spend time on the rest of her body.”

He thought about Miss Fisher’s book, hidden right at the back of his closet at the bottom of a substantial pile of blankets, and had some ideas of how that might be done.

MacMillan brought her hand in front of the model, demonstrating how he should approach things, naming different areas in such a clinical way that he felt little embarrassment in writing them down, even sketching a couple of rough diagrams which he would have to be sure to take out and hide in the book.

“If you do things right, you’ll feel her growing wet and slippery, and you might want to dip a finger inside to get her used to the idea – make sure you’ve trimmed your nails. If you’re feeling daring, you could even kiss her here. The mouth is an excellent organ for pleasing a woman - lips and tongues are incredibly versatile and gentle. You should concentrate the use of your tongue here, near the top, but don’t neglect the rest of it. And for the love of god do _not_ get carried away and use your teeth unless you want to be kicked in them. Women are even more sensitive than men down there – just think how a nice bite to your John Thomas would feel.”

He shuddered, and she seemed pleased to have made an impression.

“The basic rule still applies here: _listen to her_. She might not use words, but if she likes something, or doesn’t, you’ll be able to tell. You know her.”

He thought again of that surprised gasp, the feel of her smile against his mouth, the way she had pressed herself more tightly against him, just for a moment. He swallowed and tugged at his collar, which was feeling rather tight.

“You should be able to bring her to orgasm this way, if you listen to her well enough. If you do that, then it’ll make things easier for her when you get your own anatomy involved.” She waved at him vaguely again, a little bit dismissively.

“How will I… I mean, with me- with _men_ , it’s fairly obvious when… _it happens_ , but women don’t…?” He took a firm hold of his notebook to stop himself gesturing.

“You’ll know, Constable,” she smirked. “She might cry out, she might gasp, she might pull out great chunks of your hair, but you’ll know by how her body behaves.”

“I… see?”

She sighed and poured him another glass of whisky. “You don’t, but we’ll leave it, and you’ll see soon enough. I’m certainly not going to give you an example.”

He recognised the drink as the polite dismissal it was, and drank it quickly.

“Thank you, Doctor. You’ve been very helpful.” He slipped his notepad into his pocket and gathered his helmet under his arm as he got to his feet.

“I would say _any time_ , Collins, but I do have a job to do.” She held out a hand, and shook his firmly. “Good luck, Constable. I’m sure you’ll do her proud.”

As the young man shut the door behind him, Mac poured herself another small glass of whisky and slipped the bottle back into the drawer. She reached for the telephone and, grinning to herself, said to the operator, “Miss Fisher’s residence, please, 8347.”


End file.
